


Quick Study

by naomin



Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: American Literature, Canon Backstory, Character Study, Child Abuse, Gen, Guns, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Underage Prostitution, Organized Crime, Trauma, canon-typical but only the worst parts of canon basically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-05
Updated: 2019-01-05
Packaged: 2019-10-04 13:52:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17305802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/naomin/pseuds/naomin
Summary: A job is a job.(Ash and Blanca backstory, no ships, please pay attention to the tags and the author's note.)





	Quick Study

**Author's Note:**

> All the underage sex/abuse/prostitution mentioned in the tags happens off-screen and isn't mentioned with explicit details, but that's still basically all that this fic is about so please read with care! 
> 
> No sexual content involving Ash and Blanca, implied/referenced sexual content between Ash and Dino and Ash and other people. 
> 
> I'm anime-only and I may have fudged the timeline or some other details about Ash's past here, sorry in advance if that is the case.

 

Blanca doesn’t know what to expect, in the beginning.  He knows that the boy is Dino Golzine’s property, to be used at the whims of the old man and anyone else he pleases.  But the boy is special, too, or else Blanca wouldn’t be in this position in the first place.

What he gets is a kid who wouldn’t warrant a second glance if their paths crossed anywhere else.  His blond hair is messy, and he’s wearing a sweatshirt and blue jeans.  The look he gives Blanca is wary and unimpressed.

“Ash.  This is the man I told you about.”  The way that Dino looks at the boy, the way that he rests one hand on his shoulder, radiates _something_ – Possessiveness? Affection, maybe even love, in some twisted way? – with an intensity that seems totally out of sync with the teen’s sullen, underwhelming appearance.  This is someone special, all right.  For whatever reason.  “Pay attention and do as he says.”

Ash mumbles in the affirmative, without looking at Blanca.  He’s the picture of a reluctant teenager being forced to socialize with his parent’s friends.  Which, Blanca realizes a second after that thought, is more or less what’s going on here.

 

The place where Ash’s lessons are supposed to take place is located deep on Dino’s property, though Blanca has been allowed enough leeway to drive them there himself, at least.  There’s maybe somebody tailing them, and definitely somebody who will intervene – or try to – should he get it into his head to take off with Ash or do anything else that would displease Dino.  It itches at Blanca, but a job is a job.   

“Who are you?” Ash asks when they’re almost there.

It’s the first thing he’s said, ever, since they set out together, so Blanca keeps his eyes nonchalantly on the dirt road ahead as he answers.  The task at hand will be easier and more pleasant if Ash can become comfortable around him.  If such a thing is even possible, given what the boy’s been made to endure in his short life.

“My name is Blanca,” he tells Ash.  “I’m going to be teaching you how to fight.”

“I know _that_ ,” Ash answers, in a tone that says _are you_ stupid _?_ so clearly that Blanca has to smile a little.  No matter what kind of strange appeal Ash holds for Dino, he’s definitely a normal, bratty teenager on some level.  “I mean, who _are_ you?  Whose gang are you with?”

“I don’t belong to any gang.”

“Well, what?”  Blanca can practically feel Ash studying him from head to toe.  “Are you a cop?” Ash guesses, after a few more seconds have passed.

The kid’s perceptive, too, even though he hasn’t hit the mark.  “Not exactly,” Blanca says vaguely.  “But something sort of like that.” 

Ash huffs, unsatisfied.  There’s another moment of silence.  They’re driving through woods now, and if anyone is following them, they’re keeping well out of sight.  It’s a warm spring day, and the sun is bright where it filters down through the trees.  It’s peaceful, practically.

“Have you killed people?” Ash asks.

Blanca looks over at him.  Ash’s eyes are fixed on him boldly, without a hint of fear – with a touch too much bravado, really.  _How childish_ , Blanca finds himself thinking.  But then, Ash is young, after all.

“Yes,” he says.

Ash grins, baring his teeth.  “Cool!”

           

Apparently, Dino or whoever owned this land before him had harbored ambitions of starting their own private athletics field, at least fifteen years or so earlier.  The trees have been cleared out, making room for a track, a crumbling tennis court, and a crude shooting range.  It’s not exactly at the level of the KGB, or even some of the less-legitimate entities Blanca has worked for in the past, but it will do. 

Ash accepts the Glock 17 that Blanca hands him readily, and takes aim at one of the moldy paper targets downrange without waiting for instructions, not entirely to Blanca’s surprise.  He still doesn’t know exactly who this kid is, but nobody gets so close to the inner circles of the mafia without getting comfortable with a gun.

“Have you shot before?” Blanca asks him anyway.

“Yeah,” Ash replies, in the same manner that he had said _I know that_ in the car.  As if to prove his point, he fires three shots in quick succession, with no more warning beforehand than his eyes narrowing in concentration for just a second.  Blanca takes the opportunity to observe him.  Ash shoots like he’s used to it, for sure – one bullet hits the bullseye squarely, and the other two come so close that in real life it would be just as good – but he’s got the sloppy form of any self-taught wannabe gangster.  Blanca can more than work with that, though.

“That’s good,” he says, rather generously, when Ash is finished.  Ash turns to look up at him, a hint of curiosity on his face.  Blanca wonders with private amusement whether the boy had expected him to be more impressed.

Blanca walks back to the car and pops the trunk, revealing the selection inside: handguns, rifles, military-grade ones and even some rarer foreign models.  It’s Ash’s turn to be impressed.

“How about we try you with something a little different?” Blanca asks him. 

 

They try a lot of things.  Ash does well enough, for someone so young, and Blanca’s pleased to see that he doesn’t get tired or frustrated even after several hours pass. Perhaps Dino’s goals for the boy aren’t so far-fetched after all.

There’s just one moment that throws Blanca a little off-balance, as the afternoon is drawing to an end.  Ash is examining a KS-23 – a pleasant surprise for Blanca, to find an old Soviet police specialty among the weapons Dino had supplied them with.  The shotgun isn’t loaded, which is probably just as well given the condition of the target they’ve been using, but Ash raises it to his shoulder anyway.  His sneakers scuff at the dirt as he adjusts to the weight of it, his hands moving experimentally up and down the barrel.

“That’s not it.”  Blanca approaches him without thinking, sliding his hands over Ash’s smaller ones to adjust his grip.  He gently nudges the boy’s legs farther apart as well, until his stance is sturdy and balanced.  “If you ever shoot something like this for real, you’ll need to be prepared for the recoil, like so…”

Ash doesn’t respond.  When Blanca glances down at his face, he sees that Ash is staring straight ahead, unblinking, but he doesn’t look as if he sees the target.

_Oh_.  Blanca realizes what he’s doing, finally.  His chest is pressed flush to Ash's back like this, and though Blanca’s had to bend his knees a little to get to his level, to Ash it would still feel like Blanca is looming over him.  As close as they are, Blanca can feel that Ash is holding himself very still.  It’s obvious as words on a page, the manner of one who is uncomfortable but has learned that showing it won’t get him anything good.

Blanca wonders how many other times Ash has been sent off with a strange man, with instructions to do as he’s told.

_Don’t think about it._ Blanca has one job to do here, and that’s what he’s going to focus on.  “There,” Blanca announces.  He takes a big step back, putting space between himself and Ash.  “But you won’t come across a gun like that very often.  It’s not worth spending much time on it.”

Ash still doesn’t respond, and doesn’t move for what feels like an uncomfortably long amount of time, but at last he brings the gun down from his shoulder, examines it a few seconds more, and then picks up a different one. 

 

“How did it go?” Dino asks when they return that evening.

“He did well.  I’m looking forward to our future lessons.”

Dino nods, pleased, and turns his gaze expectantly towards Ash.

Ash shrugs.  “It was okay.”

 

The lessons go well.  There are other moments, here and there - moments when Blanca can feel Ash studying him when he thinks Blanca won’t notice, when Ash braces himself for something that Blanca will never do.

Blanca has resolved these moments pass with no acknowledgement whatsoever, but once or twice, when he can sense that Ash is considering how isolated the two of them are from the rest of the estate (Blanca’s fairly certain that no one’s monitoring them anymore) and the difference in their size and strength, he lets himself make a comment that might have an aim beyond purely idle conversation.

“That maid who’s always by the entrance in the morning is quite something, don’t you think?  The redhead.  She’s Czech, isn’t she?”

Ash blinks at him, and then, a second later, lets out a derisive snort.  “ _Her?_   Get in line.  She’s got a fiancé, _and_ she’s sleeping with the head of security.  He’s the one who buys her those ugly purses she’s always showing off.”

“Don’t be rude,” Blanca says mildly.

“Whatever, old man,” Ash jeers, at ease.

Over time, the moments come less and less frequently.  Ash is prickly and standoffish in the way that all adolescent boys are - Blanca’s pretty sure, he hasn’t been a teenager himself in a while – but there’s none of that particular uncomfortable tension, and Blanca breathes easier for it.  The lessons are getting to be fun, though he’d be reluctant to admit that fact.  He’s never had the chance to put his skills to use quite like this before, and he couldn’t have picked a better pupil than Ash. 

 

“What’s that?” Ash asks, one day.

Blanca waves the book he’s been making his way idly through in Ash’s direction.  He’s been taking it easy this afternoon, making Ash run through maneuvers that he already basically understands.

Ash sets down his gun and steps a little closer, squinting at the title.  “ _The Last Tycoon_?”

“The author’s very famous,” Blanca tells him.  “You should give his books a try, maybe when you’re a little older.”

Ash scoffs.  “I know _him_.  I read _Great Gatsby ages_ ago.”

“Oh, really?”  Ash might be bluffing – but then again, maybe not.  There’s still so much that Blanca doesn’t know about the boy.  Was his childhood ever normal enough that he could attend school at some point?  Is Dino giving any thought to his academics now?  If Ash is capable of excelling at normal lessons the same way he does with what Blanca’s been teaching him – and Blanca’s fairly certain that he is – letting that intellect go to waste would be a big mistake.

“Would you like to read this, after me?”  Blanca offers.  Ash examines the book a little further and makes a show of being unimpressed, but Blanca sees him paging through it now and then later in the day, when he thinks Blanca’s distracted.

 

A few days later, before Blanca and Ash can head out, Dino instructs Blanca that once the lesson is over he’s to drive Ash somewhere else instead of bringing him back to the mansion.  Blanca is provided with an address, which, unhappily, turns out to require a long, traffic-jammed drive into Manhattan.  Blanca wonders whether Dino has enough clout in the city to take care of things if anybody should notice the arsenal they’re still carrying around inside the car, or whether the old man knows that Blanca wouldn’t allow it to come to that in the first place.

“What’s this, more lessons?”  Blanca asks Ash absentmindedly, peering into the sea of taillights before them in search of the exit.

Ash has been slouched in his seat, staring out the window, but now he jerks his head over to give Blanca a look that’s confused, almost startled.  “What?  No!”

Their destination is a ritzy high-rise apartment building, fizzing with activity even though it’s late on a weeknight by the time they arrive.  Ash, who clearly knows the drill, gets out of the car without a word and heads for the entrance.

“Wait – do I need to pick you up later?” Blanca calls out the window.  It’s clumsy, not like him.  He shouldn’t do something that might call attention to the two of them, he shouldn’t care what happens now that he’s done what Dino asked. 

Ash doubles back, scowling.  “It’s fine,” he hisses.  “Don’t worry about that, just _go_.”  Then he turns sharply and strides away again, disappearing between the automatic doors.

The drive back out of the city feels even longer than the drive in. 

         

Blanca’s known from the start what Dino and all the other men are doing to Ash, and he knows that Ash isn’t the only child caught up in that web, even if he’s the only one who spends three hours a day firing military-grade artillery in the woods with Blanca.  As for himself, Blanca has never taken a partner who wasn’t enthusiastically willing, and definitely not one who’s probably not even past _middle school,_ but he’s done plenty of things that are probably just as bad, and turned a blind eye to plenty more.

Their practice area has a bathroom contained in a dilapidated structure that’s more of a concrete box than a building, along with a couple of grimy shower heads which are surprisingly still usable. Washing up there after particularly demanding lessons takes Blanca back to his days as a cadet.  He makes a point of not looking at Ash, but the boy’s skin is so pale that bruises are impossible to miss.  Even from a quick glance, Blanca knows the marks of a boot to the ribs, wrists bound too tightly. 

One day, Ash has a black eye, and his arm is in a sling.  Nobody bothers to give Blanca an explanation, even a made-up one.  Blanca has him practice shooting with his other hand, and he takes to it as well as everything else.  Later that evening, a couple of Dino’s guys try to rope Blanca into helping them with a task that’s vaguely described, but definitely involves disposing of a body.  He turns them down.  Not his job, not his business.

 

Dino has never offered Ash to Blanca, or even shown him any of the videos that Blanca knows exist.  Blanca isn’t sure if it’s because Dino can understand that Blanca isn’t that kind of man, or if he just hasn’t deemed him worthy of such an honor.  Once, after the first two weeks of lessons, the old gangster had summoned Blanca and, sounding more cheerful than Blanca had ever heard him before, declared that Blanca deserved “a special token of my appreciation” for the way that things were progressing.  Blanca had felt his stomach twist instinctively at the words, and when he had glanced over at Ash – he hadn’t been able to catch himself, even though he should have far better self-control - he had found Ash staring back at him.  The expression on his face had been unreadable, a door shut and locked.  In the end, all Dino had done was write Blanca an extra check, and make unnervingly friendly promises to help Blanca find women, or drugs, or anything else he might like so long as it doesn’t interfere with his duties with Ash.

Dino’s hardly discreet, however.  He drags Ash everywhere with the kind of relentlessness usually reserved for rich old ladies carrying their toy poodles into restaurants and art galleries, and Dino’s underlings comment on the various uses he has for Ash – even joke about them – with an ease that makes it clear the subject is general knowledge.

One evening, Dino brings Blanca to a party, at some other remote mansion where even the guests whose faces Blanca doesn’t recognize from newspapers are clearly important people.  Nobody looks very happy to see Blanca, but Ash, in a tailored suit that will probably make him look very grown-up in another year or so, gets a much warmer reception.  Blanca watches from the drinks table as Ash is proudly shepherded from one conversation to another.  Sometimes Ash gets a handshake as a greeting, occasionally he gets a pat on the head or on the shoulder that lingers a little too long.  Blanca has a hangover the next morning.  Ash finds this highly entertaining at first, and then gets frustrated when Blanca isn’t in the mood to show him any new tricks or tell him about what he’s reading.

Blanca refuses any more invitations from Dino – unlike Ash, he’s not _quite_ so badly off that all his boss has to do is buy him a suit and snap their fingers – but it’s harder to ignore the lessons that end in evening drop-offs, or the marks on Ash’s body.

 

“If you really want my advice...”  Blanca volunteers, in a rare moment where it’s just him and Dino.

“What is it?”  Dino’s in a good mood, once again, after hearing Blanca’s latest assessment of Ash’s skills.  Blanca will have a lot of goodwill built up by the time this job is done.  

“Stop letting anyone use Ash.  Stop using him yourself, too.”

“Why?”  Dino narrows his eyes, and for a moment Blanca can see not just the bald old man who can only get off on boys too young and helpless to put up a struggle, but the mafia don with decades of experience pulling the strings and crushing anyone who gets on his bad side.

“I thought you wanted me to teach him.  If he’s not in good condition, it slows things down.”

“He won’t get far in life if he can’t brush off a little pain when he needs to,” Dino says dismissively, but the look on his face says that he’s thinking it over.

Later, Blanca still catches glimpses of Ash entering Dino’s private rooms at odd hours, Ash being picked up or dropped off at the mansion’s gates, but the number of bruises that Ash turns up to his lessons with drops to almost zero.  Blanca supposes that this is Dino making a compromise.  He supposes that he should feel pleased by it.

 

The days get longer and warmer.  Blanca’s bank account grows, hardly touched thanks to Dino covering most of his expenses in addition to his agreed-upon pay.  Ash takes to every weapon and tactic he’s introduced to with gusto.  Blanca reads a lot – this job is leaving him with more time on his hands than he's had at any other point in his entire adult life – and leaves the books around where Ash can find them.  He realizes that part of him feels more at ease now than he’s been in a long time.  He doesn’t know if that’s a good thing or not.      

 

One sticky day in July, Dino gives Blanca yet another set of instructions for after the day’s lesson is over.  Ash has somewhere to be that night, although this time the visit will be brief enough that Blanca is to wait for him and drive him home afterwards.  The address is one that Blanca recognizes.  Almost all of the people Ash is pimped out to these days are easy on him, ever since Blanca’s talk with Dino.  The man at this address is not.

Blanca wonders if this is purposeful, Dino sending some kind of message, or if it’s just most convenient to give Blanca this task today and Dino knows that he’ll do it.

Ash is quieter than usual as they get started.  Blanca knows by now that he will have been filled in already about what’s expected of him later, at some point earlier in the day when it was just him and Dino.

Tomorrow, Ash will have new injuries when Blanca picks him up for his lesson, and all three of them – Blanca, Dino, Ash – will go on as if everything’s normal.  Or maybe someone will inform Blanca that Ash’s lesson has been canceled, and that Blanca can take the day off.

“I think,” Blanca remarks after some time has passed.  “That it's time I started teaching you more about strategy.  Espionage, do you know what that means?”

On a different day, Ash would be keen to try something new, or at least offended that Blanca would suggest that he doesn’t know what espionage is.  Now, he just shrugs.  “Yeah?”

“Just shooting like this is one thing – “ Blanca nods at the pistols that they’re both holding.  It’s been an afternoon of simple drills, neither of them in the mood for anything more complicated.  “But there are all kinds of factors in real life, things you have to think of before you come to that point.  Maybe we’ll start focusing on that tomorrow.”  

“Fine,” Ash says, without relish.

“Lots of it is things that can work in your favor, even,” Blanca presses on.  “For example – learning your target’s habits.  Someone who’s normally with a bodyguard, let's say, might send the guard away at times when he wants a little privacy.  And then, perhaps," he continues, just a little more pointedly. "The guard might even leave the building entirely for a while.  A good opportunity if you could find that out, right?”

Ash gives him a sharp look.  Clearly, he’s noticed that the hired muscle at tonight’s destination is shooed away at the same time that Ash arrives, but probably not the second part.  It’s the kind of thing would be difficult to know for certain, if you weren’t in a car on the street and able to watch the bodyguard stride off towards the block where the nearest massage parlors are.

Blanca smiles at him.  “And perhaps this person lives in a building with sturdy walls, where the people around him are used to keeping their mouths shut?  A silencer would be more than enough, but even if you didn’t use one, no one would investigate until you were long gone.  Do you see?”

Ash is staring up at him, wide-eyed and confounded.  His grip on his pistol is slack and distracted.  He sees.

“And then,” Blanca continues lightly. “Why, it would be…what, a piece of cake, wouldn’t it?”  He gives his pistol a little jerk in the direction of their target for emphasis, and sees Ash flinch, though the boy's expression doesn’t change.  

“Where did I tell you is the best place to aim at close range, do you remember?” 

Ash doesn’t answer, not that Blanca expects it. 

“Just the kind of things you should keep in mind,” Blanca tells him.

 

When the lesson is over, he tells Ash to secure the guns by himself while he takes a shower.

           

They don’t have to go all the way into Manhattan this time, at least, just to one of the outer boroughs.  The street is empty but for a few parked cars.  Blanca can see a couple of apartments, and a few more buildings with strange off-brand retail on the bottom and office space for rent on top.  One of the street lights is broken.  Everything is very quiet.

Ash is out of the car and down the street without so much as a glance at Blanca.  That much is unpleasantly familiar by now, but this time Blanca knows that something is different, even though anyone looking at Ash won’t notice it.  Not until it’s too late, anyway.

He’s parked close to the one functioning street light but positioned so that the security camera on the nearest building won’t be able to catch the license plate – an automatic precaution, even though the car is one of Dino’s and the plate probably can’t be traced.  There’s just enough light to read the book he’s got stashed in the glove compartment.  It’s another F. Scott Fitzgerald.  Blanca would be lying if he said he hadn’t had Ash in mind when he picked it up.  

A man Blanca recognizes as the useless bodyguard exits the same building Ash had entered, and walks down the street with his back to Blanca.  Ash and the other man should be alone now.

Which gun had Ash chosen?  Blanca hadn’t tried to find out.  They have several different handguns available, and any of them would do the job well enough, though some of them will be easier to conceal than others. 

Minutes click by on the dashboard clock.  Blanca starts a new chapter.

Has enough time passed by now?  Too much?  Blanca realizes that he’s having a hard time predicting how this should go.  He tries to picture the steps: After Ash is let into the apartment, will the man bring him straight to the bedroom, or will he take his time?  Will he –

He gives his head a shake, forcing his attention back to the book.  He shouldn’t be thinking about this.  He’s given it way too much thought already, this whole mess that isn’t even part of what his job is supposed to be.  It’s up to Ash now.

A siren wails in the distance.  Blanca stiffens for a moment, but the sound fades away without drawing anywhere near their block, leaving only the even fainter sound of a barking dog in its wake.

Still no sign of Ash.

Blanca could have done it himself.  A shot clean through one of the windows, or even at point-blank range as the man answered the door.  If Ash can do this task easily, Blanca can do it without thinking.  Dino would learn about the incident and connect the dots, for sure, but what would he be able to do?  Perhaps he wouldn’t even particularly care.  The old man doesn’t seem particularly attached to any of his associates, except for Ash.

There’s no need to worry about Ash.  Not that this has anything to do with Blanca, but he knows that he’s taught Ash how to take care of himself well over the past couple of months. 

Blanca could have killed this man, or any of the others who laid a hand on Ash, even Dino.  He didn’t.  He won’t.  If that says something about him, it’s nothing he didn’t know already. 

After about an hour, Ash emerges from the apartment building and slouches back to the car.  Blanca watches his approach out of the corner of his eye, but waits until Ash knocks on his window to set the book aside and unlock the car.  Ash’s jaw is set stoically, and few but Blanca, with all the time he’s spent being around Ash and coming to know how Ash hides pain, would notice that he’s moving a just a little bit gingerly as he slides into the passenger seat.  There’s no trace of blood on him anywhere at all, not even the scent of it.

Blanca starts the car, and turns them back the way they came without saying a word.

 

“So?” Ash demands, after a few blocks.

“Hmm?”  Blanca replies innocently. 

“I let him fuck me, you know,” Ash says loudly.  The way he spits out the words makes Blanca’s hands tighten on the steering wheel, instincts honed by years in the field pinging danger signals.

“Okay,” he says, in the end.  He keeps his eyes on the road.  There’s an unexpected sense of _déjà vu_ about this.

“You thought that I should kill him.”

They’re coming up on an intersection.  Blanca flips the turn signal on.  “That would have been a bit risky, wouldn’t it?” 

“Cut the _bullshit_ ,” Ash hisses.  “All those fucking hints you were dropping earlier.  _Espionage_.  Bullshit!”

“You really do need to start learning about – “ Blanca starts to say, but before he can finish he feels something pressing against his side, something which gives him _déjà vu_ of a rather different sort.

Ash is glaring at him from the passenger side, looking angrier than Blanca’s ever seen before.  He’s got one of the Beretta pistols in his hand.  _Not a bad choice._

“Pull over,” Ash orders.

Blanca does, turning them into a parking lot behind an abandoned building that’s plastered with signs for payday loans.

“I could have killed him,” Ash declares.  “You know I could have."

“Yes.”  No arguments there, especially not while Ash is still jamming the Beretta into Blanca's ribs.   

“I could have, but I didn’t. Do you wanna know why?”    

_Do you want to tell me why?_ Blanca almost asks.  He can intuit that even a comment like that might make Ash lose his composure now.  _Childish._ But Ash is very, very, young _._

Ash’s chest rises and falls with ragged, unsteady breaths.  “Because I did that already!” he bursts out, finally.

He suddenly sounds exasperated more than anything else.  It takes Blanca a few seconds to process what he’s said.  “Already?” he repeats at last, keeping his voice very even. 

“Yeah!”  The muzzle of the Beretta wavers a little bit with the force of Ash’s words.  Blanca notes its path without taking his eyes from Ash’s face.  There are at least three different ways he can incapacitate Ash now if he has to, more if he lets himself use a fatal level of force.  Ash has been a quick study, these past few months, but they’re still on different levels. 

“You don’t know everything,” Ash accuses him.  “You _or_ Dino.  I killed a guy _long_ ago.” 

Blanca nods, carefully.  He hopes that Ash is still with him, in the parking lot, and not somewhere else inside his head.  Blanca’s witnessed plenty of PTSD-fueled episodes in his time – he hadn’t expected anything like this from Ash, despite it all, but clearly there’s still a lot about Ash that Blanca hasn’t been privy to yet.

“He was – he messed with me, same old shit.  I got a gun by myself and shot him just like this.”

“I see,” Blanca says. 

Ash shrugs haphazardly.  If he notices that his pistol is aimed at the back of Blanca’s car seat much more than Blanca himself by now, he doesn’t seem to care.  “I was like…eight?  It was _ages_ ago.”

Nothing should really come as a surprise anymore. Blanca feels his stomach drop all the same. 

Around the car, the city is dark and excruciatingly silent.

“Anyway, I did it!  It’s not fucking _hard_.” 

“All right,” Blanca agrees numbly.

“But you know what?”  Ash demands.  He’s been staring at some point off in the distance for most of the time that they’ve been parked, but now his eyes lock with Blanca’s.  It’s impossible to tell if there are tears there, or if it’s just a trick of what little light there is.

Blanca has to catch himself from trying to turn away.  Having the gun pointed at him was easier than this.  “What, Ash?”

He can see Ash’s lips pulling back joylessly, a death grimace.

“ _I did that and now I’m here,”_ Ash says.   

Blanca is frozen in the car seat, staring down at him.

“Now I’m here,” Ash repeats, like it’s a punchline and he’s waiting for Blanca to laugh.

The moment stretches on.  Another car passes the parking lot for the first time, without slowing down.  As Blanca glances automatically towards the sound of it, Ash’s shoulders droop, and without any more warning, he flings the Beretta into the back seat of the car.  Blanca feels himself startle for real, this time – _that’s_ something that Ash is going to have to be taught to never do again – but to his relief, the pistol bounces harmlessly to the floor without going off.  Blanca fishes for it, keeping one eye on Ash, and switches the safety on.

Ash has curled in upon himself in the passenger seat.  Just as Blanca starts to open his mouth to say something to him, Ash takes a deep breath and lets out a great wordless cry, practically a howl.  It goes on for what feels like a very long time, a sound that doesn’t seem to belong to either a child or an adult.

When it’s over, Ash's shoulders have sagged even further.  “Can you drive?” he asks at last, voice thick.  “I’m fucking tired, I want to go back now.” 

Blanca drives.

 

By the time they pull up in front of Dino’s mansion, Ash has sat up straight again.  His face is paler than usual, perhaps, but even that’s hard to tell in the dark. 

“Are you gonna tell him?” Ash mutters, one hand hovering over his door handle.

“Tell him what?”  Blanca asks.   

Ash starts to speak again.  When Blanca gives him a significant look, he finally gets it.  He shuts his mouth and climbs out of the car.

Blanca listens to the crunch of Ash’s sneakers on the gravel driveway, and distant sound of someone speaking to him, not quite discernible.  _Welcome back_ , it could be, or _Papa Dino has been waiting._ Blanca stays sitting in the car until he hears someone else start to come over to check on him.

The sky is just as relentlessly black out here as it had been in the city, without a star in sight.  Blanca realizes for the first time how late it must be.  It’s not really a problem though, not here.  He’ll be able to get as much sleep as he likes before it’s time for him to meet with Ash in the afternoon.

He lets the car door slam shut behind him with only a little more force than necessary.  It’s just a job.  It’ll be over soon enough.      

 

**Author's Note:**

> I've been really into Banana Fish these last several months, but honestly I'm not sure if I have a handle on any of the characters, like...especially Blanca? But this idea popped into my head and I really felt like getting it out, so I just went with it. I hope it held your interest if you read this far, even if it got into OOC territory! If the ending is too depressing, please remember that probably not too long after this Ash starts getting into street gang stuff more seriously and I imagine that he's at least somewhat happier then even before he meets Eiji and things kick off.


End file.
